The valet Frycollin did not conceal2 his terror at finding himself borne through space on such a machine, and he took no pains whatever to hide it.
The suspensory screws were rapidly spinning overhead. Fast as they were going, they would have to triple their speed if the "Albatross" was to ascend3 to higher zones. The two propellers4 were running very easily and driving the ship at about eleven knots an hour.
As they leaned over the rail the passengers of the "Albatross" could perceive a long sinuous5 liquid ribbon which meandered6 like a mere7 brook8 through a varied9 country amid the gleaming of many lagoons11 obliquely12 struck by the rays of the sun. The brook was a river, one of the most important in that district. Along its left bank was a chain of mountains extending out of sight.
"I have nothing to teach you," answered Robur.
"And will you tell us where we are going?" asked Phil Evans.
"Through space."
"And how long will that last?"
"Until it ends."
"Are we going round the world?" asked Phil Evans ironically.
"Further than that," said Robur.
"And if this voyage does not suit us?" asked Uncle Prudent.
"It will have to suit you."
That is a foretaste of the nature of the relations that were to obtain between the master of the "Albatross" and his guests, not to say his prisoners. Manifestly he wished to give them time to cool down, to admire the marvelous apparatus15 which was bearing them through the air, and doubtless to compliment the inventor. And so he went off to the other end of the deck, leaving them to examine the arrangement of the machinery16 and the management of the ship or to give their whole attention to the landscape which was unrolling beneath them.
"Uncle Prudent," said Evans, "unless I am mistaken we are flying over Central Canada. That river in the northwest is the St. Lawrence. That town we are leaving behind is Quebec."
It was indeed the old city of Champlain, whose zinc17 roofs were shining like reflectors in the sun. The "Albatross" must thus have reached the forty-sixth degree of north latitude18, and thus was explained the premature19 advance of the day with the abnormal prolongation of the dawn.
"Yes," said Phil Evans, "There is the town in its amphitheater, the hill with its citadel20, the Gibraltar of North America. There are the cathedrals. There is the Custom House with its dome21 surmounted22 by the British flag!"
Phil Evans had not finished before the Canadian city began to slip into the distance.
The clipper entered a zone of light clouds, which gradually shut off a view of the ground.
Robur, seeing that the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute had directed their attention to the external arrangements of the "Albatross," walked up to them and said: "Well, gentlemen, do you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion23 by machines heavier than air?"
It would have been difficult not to succumb24 to the evidence. But Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans did not reply.
"You are silent," continued the engineer. "Doubtless hunger makes you dumb! But if I undertook to carry you through the air, I did not think of feeding you on such a poorly nutritive fluid. Your first breakfast is waiting for you."
As Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans were feeling the pangs25 of hunger somewhat keenly they did not care to stand upon ceremony. A meal would commit them to nothing; and when Robur put them back on the ground they could resume full liberty of action.
And so they followed into a small dining-room in the aftermost house. There they found a well-laid table at which they could take their meals during the voyage. There were different preserves; and, among other things, was a sort of bread made of equal parts of flour and meat reduced to powder and worked together with a little lard, which boiled in water made excellent soup; and there were rashers of fried ham, and for drink there was tea.
Neither had Frycollin been forgotten. He was taken forward and there found some strong soup made of this bread. In truth he had to be very hungry to eat at all, for his jaws26 shook with fear, and almost refused to work. "If it was to break! If it was to break!" said the unfortunate Negro. Hence continual faintings. Only think! A fall of over four thousand feet, which would smash him to a jelly!
An hour afterwards Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans appeared on the deck. Robur was no longer there. At the stem the man at the wheel in his glass cage, his eyes fixed27 on the compass, followed imperturbably28 without hesitation29 the route given by the engineer.
As for the rest of the crew, breakfast probably kept them from their posts. An assistant engineer, examining the machinery, went from one house to the other.
If the speed of the ship was great the two colleagues could only estimate it imperfectly, for the "Albatross" had passed through the cloud zone which the sun showed some four thousand feet below.
"I can hardly believe it," said Phil Evans.
"Don't believe it!" said Uncle Prudent. And going to the bow they looked out towards the western horizon.
"Another town," said Phil Evans.
"Do you recognize it?"
"Yes! It seems to me to be Montreal."
"Montreal? But we only left Quebec two hours ago!"
"That proves that we must be going at a speed of seventy-five miles an hour."
Such was the speed of the aeronef; and if the passengers were not inconvenienced by it, it was because they were going with the wind. In a calm such speed would have been difficult and the rate would have sunk to that of an express. In a head-wind the speed would have been unbearable30.
Phil Evans was not mistaken. Below the "Albatross" appeared Montreal, easily recognizable by the Victoria Bridge, a tubular bridge thrown over the St. Lawrence like the railway viaduct over the Venice lagoon10. Soon they could distinguish the town's wide streets, its huge shops, its palatial31 banks, its cathedral, recently built on the model of St. Peter's at Rome, and then Mount Royal, which commands the city and forms a magnificent park.
Luckily Phil Evans had visited the chief towns of Canada, and could recognize them without asking Robur. After Montreal they passed Ottawa, whose falls, seen from above, looked like a vast cauldron in ebullition, throwing off masses of steam with grand effect.
"There is the Parliament House."
And he pointed32 out a sort of Nuremburg toy planted on a hill top. This toy with its polychrome architecture resembled the House of Parliament in London much as the Montreal cathedral resembles St. Peter's at Rome. But that was of no consequence; there could be no doubt it was Ottawa.
It was almost two hours before Robur appeared. His mate, Tom Turner, accompanied him. He said only three words. These were transmitted to the two assistant engineers in the fore14 and aft engine-houses. At a sign the helmsman changed the-direction of the "Albatross" a couple of points to the southwest; at the same time Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans felt that a greater speed had been given to the propellers.
In fact, the speed had been doubled, and now surpassed anything that had ever been attained34 by terrestrial Engines. Torpedo-boats do their twenty-two knots an hour; railway trains do their sixty miles an hour; the ice-boats on the frozen Hudson do their sixty-five miles an hour; a machine built by the Patterson company, with a cogged wheel, has done its eighty miles; and another locomotive between Trenton and Jersey35 City has done its eighty-four.
But the "Albatross," at full speed, could do her hundred and twenty miles an hour, or 176 feet per second. This speed is that of the storm which tears up trees by the roots. It is the mean speed of the carrier pigeon, and is only surpassed by the flight of the swallow (220 feet per second) and that of the swift (274 feet per second).
In a word, as Robur had said, the "Albatross," by using the whole force of her screws, could make the tour of the globe in two hundred hours, or less than eight days.
Is it necessary to say so? The phenomenon whose appearance had so much puzzled the people of both worlds was the aeronef of the engineer. The trumpet36 which blared its startling fanfares37 through the air was that of the mate, Tom Turner. The flag planted on the chief monuments of Europe, Asia, America, was the flag of Robur the Conqueror38 and his "Albatross."
And if up to then the engineer had taken many precautions against being recognized, if by preference he traveled at night, clearing the way with his electric lights, and during the day vanishing into the zones above the clouds, he seemed now to have no wish to keep his secret hidden. And if he had come to Philadelphia and presented himself at the meeting of the Weldon Institute, was it not that they might share in his prodigious39 discovery, and convince "ipso facto" the most incredulous? We know how he had been received, and we see what reprisals40 he had taken on the president and secretary of the club.
Again did Robur approach his prisoners, who affected41 to be in no way surprised at what they saw, of what had succeeded in spite of them. Evidently beneath the cranium of these two Anglo-Saxon heads there was a thick crust of obstinacy42, which would not be easy to remove.
On his part, Robur did not seem to notice anything particular, and coolly continued the conversation which he had begun two hours before.
"Gentlemen," said he, "you ask yourselves doubtless if this apparatus, so marvelously adapted for aerial locomotion, is susceptible43 of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to conquer space if we cannot devour44 it. I wanted the air to be a solid support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I must be stronger than the wind, and I am. I had no need of sails to drive me, nor oars45 nor wheels to push me, nor rails to give me a faster road. Air is what I wanted, that was all. Air surrounds me as it surrounds the submarine boat, and in it my propellers act like the screws of a steamer. That is how I solved the problem of aviation. That is what a balloon will never do, nor will any machine that is lighter46 than air."
Silence, absolute, on the part of the colleagues, which did not for a moment disconcert the engineer. He contented47 himself with a half-smile, and continued in his interrogative style, "Perhaps you ask if to this power of the "Albatross" to move horizontally there is added an equal power of vertical48 movement—in a word, if, when, we visit the higher zones of the atmosphere, we can compete with an aerostat? Well, I should not advise you to enter the "Go-Ahead" against her!"
Robur made a sign. The propelling screws immediately stopped, and after running for a mile the "Albatross" pulled up motionless.
At a second gesture from Robur the suspensory helices revolved50 at a speed that can only be compared to that of a siren in acoustical51 experiments. Their f-r-r-r-r rose nearly an octave in the scale of sound, diminishing gradually in intensity52 as the air became more rarified, and the machine rose vertically53, like a lark54 singing his song in space.
"Master! Master!" shouted Frycollin. "See that it doesn't break!"
A smile of disdain55 was Robur's only reply. In a few minutes the "Albatross" had attained the height of 8,700 feet, and extended the range of vision by seventy miles, the barometer56 having fallen 480 millimeters.
Then the "Albatross" descended57. The diminution58 of the pressure in high altitudes leads to the diminution of oxygen in the air, and consequently in the blood. This has been the cause of several serious accidents which have happened to aeronauts, and Robur saw no reason to run any risk.
The "Albatross" thus returned to the height she seemed to prefer, and her propellers beginning again, drove her off to the southwest.
"Now, sirs, if that is what you wanted you can reply." Then, leaning over the rail, he remained absorbed in contemplation.
When he raised his head the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute stood by his side.
"Engineer Robur," said Uncle Prudent, in vain endeavoring to control himself, "we have nothing to ask about what you seem to believe, but we wish to ask you a question which we think you would do well to answer."
"Speak."
"By what right did you attack us in Philadelphia in Fairmount Park? By what right did you shut us up in that prison? By what right have you brought us against our will on board this flying machine?"
"And by what right, Messieurs Balloonists, did you insult and threaten me in your club in such a way that I am astonished I came out of it alive?"
"To ask is not to answer," said Phil Evans, "and I repeat, by what right?"
"Do you wish to know?"
"If you please."
"Well, by the right of the strongest!"
"But it is true."
"And for how long, citizen engineer," asked Uncle Prudent, who was nearly exploding, "for how long do you intend to exercise that right?"
"How can you?" said Robur, ironically, "how can you ask me such a question when you have only to cast down your eyes to enjoy a spectacle unparalleled in the world?"
The "Albatross" was then sweeping60 across the immense expanse of Lake Ontario. She had just crossed the country so poetically61 described by Cooper. Then she followed the southern shore and headed for the celebrated62 river which pours into it the waters of Lake Erie, breaking them to powder in its cataracts63.
In an instant a majestic64 sound, a roar as of the tempest, mounted towards them and, as if a humid fog had been projected into the air, the atmosphere sensibly freshened. Below were the liquid masses. They seemed like an enormous flowing sheet of crystal amid a thousand rainbows due to refraction as it decomposed65 the solar rays. The sight was sublime66.
Before the falls a foot-bridge, stretching like a thread, united one bank to the other. Three miles below was a suspension-bridge, across which a train was crawling from the Canadian to the American bank.
"The falls of Niagara!" exclaimed Phil Evans. And as the exclamation67 escaped him, Uncle Prudent was doing all could do to admire nothing of these wonders.
A minute afterwards the "Albatross" had crossed the river which separates the United States from Canada, and was flying over the vast territories of the West.
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1
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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propellers
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器( propeller的名词复数 ) | |
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sinuous
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| adj.蜿蜒的，迂回的 | |
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meandered
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| （指溪流、河流等）蜿蜒而流( meander的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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lagoon
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| n.泻湖，咸水湖 | |
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lagoons
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| n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 )；潟湖；（大湖或江河附近的）小而浅的淡水湖；温泉形成的池塘 | |
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obliquely
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| adv.斜； 倾斜； 间接； 不光明正大 | |
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prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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zinc
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| n.锌；vt.在...上镀锌 | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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citadel
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| n.城堡；堡垒；避难所 | |
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dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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surmounted
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| 战胜( surmount的过去式和过去分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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locomotion
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| n.运动，移动 | |
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succumb
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| v.屈服，屈从；死 | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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imperturbably
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| adv.泰然地，镇静地，平静地 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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palatial
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| adj.宫殿般的，宏伟的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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fanfares
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conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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reprisals
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| n.报复（行为）( reprisal的名词复数 ) | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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revolved
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的过去式和过去分词 )；细想 | |
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acoustical
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| adj. 听觉的，声学的，音响学的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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barometer
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| n.气压表，睛雨表，反应指标 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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diminution
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| n.减少；变小 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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poetically
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| adv.有诗意地，用韵文 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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cataracts
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| n.大瀑布( cataract的名词复数 )；白内障 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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decomposed
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| 已分解的，已腐烂的 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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